


Roots

by Debate



Series: Our Love is a Forest [4]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Life-Affirming Sex, Outdoor Sex, Post-Episode: s04e08 God Complex, but not really in a kinky way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 13:08:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14165517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debate/pseuds/Debate
Summary: And then her badass hand is pressing into his chest and he loves her strange knobbly knuckles, and her other hand is caressing his cheek to guide him into a kiss, and he loves her jagged fingernails and her raw lips, and her. He loves her.[Post God Complex, Murphy and Emori seclude themselves and reaffirm a few things to one another.]





	Roots

He watches Abby cry, and feels a sort of vindictive understanding. His hand reaches out for Emori’s but he doesn’t take his eyes off Abby, because yeah, he wants to see her suffer, just a bit. Wants her to choke on the same fear he felt. 

He and Emori watch until the Griffins get their shit together. Clarke rises from the ground where she had collapsed next to her mom and promptly begins to deliver orders. She doesn’t look at him and only barely meets Emori’s eyes when she tells them to get some rest. 

Murphy almost wants to stay, as a sort of ‘fuck you’ to whatever authority Clarke thinks she has over him, but ultimately this lab is probably his least favorite place on earth right now, so he doesn’t raise any complaints as they leave. 

They barely make it ten steps into the forest before Emori stops for a moment and leans against a tree. Her exhale is long and raw, as if she’s banishing from her body all the evils that were committed against her today. She opens her eyes slowly, meeting his gaze instantly, and he doesn’t hesitate to step into her space, wrapping her in his arms. Emori’s hands instantly latch onto his back, her fingers digging into the material of his shirt, like she needs to prove her strength for some reason. 

“I don’t want to go to the mansion,” she says, sometime later, lips pressed just above his heart. 

“Okay,” he agrees easily, “then we won’t.” 

It takes a couple more minutes before she steps out of his embrace, but they never break contact, her hand immediately interlocking with his as she leads the way deeper into the forest. 

They don’t venture too far, but they do move off the path that’s been beaten between the lab, the mansion, and the shore. Murphy’s not worried about the drones, not with Miller and Jackson running around the island doing errands for Clarke, but Emori picks a protected spot to settle down anyway, between a boulder and the thick trunk of a tree. 

The space isn’t very wide, it would fit maybe four people squeezed shoulder-to-shoulder, but as it is he and Emori are able to fit comfortably. She inches closer to him after he lays down beside her, which he hears and feels more than sees. The foliage of the tree blocks out most of the light from the stars and the crescent moon. 

“Do you remember our first night off the boat?” she breathes against him, and this forest is weird, so silent he can hear every little sound she makes. The brush of her hair against her clothes, her nails scratching in the dirt, the soft water-like quality of her voice. 

“Yeah,” his voice rasps in return. It had been colder than, more awkward too, back in that brief fuzzy time where he had decided to trust her but was still waiting to get screwed over again. A couple days before she first kissed him. 

“It had been sorta like this,” she recollects, “except colder, and you were useless ‘cause you didn’t know how to start a fire.” 

He chuckles against her hairline, lets his hand run up and down the length of her waist. “Well, I remember you not knowing how to tell a proper ghost story,” he says in retaliation, and he can feel the uptick of her lips against his chest, and the tension that had been gripping his heart so fiercely loosens a little. 

“That’s because I had an disinterested audience.”

“‘S not my fault,” he murmurs. “You’re pretty, it’s distracting.” She pauses, lifts her head to look at him, even if she can’t see him in the darkness. 

“Thank you,” she says suddenly, quiet, but heartfelt, and he’s about to ask her what she means when she beats him to the punch. “Thank you for loving me.” 

He hears her exhale as he tilts his head to kiss her. 

“John,” she says, and his first two kisses miss, landing on the scar high on her cheekbone and then the dimple of her mouth. When their lips finally connect, it’s for longer than he expects. He had meant for just a peck, reaffirming and loving, but Emori’s hand had caught his neck instead, keeping him close. 

Her right hand comes to rest on his shoulder and she shifts onto him, pressing their chests together. Her hand moves from his neck to cup his face, the rough texture of her glove scraping against his cheek. 

“John,” she says, breaking the kiss, but not moving so far that he can’t still feel her breath against his mouth. “I want you to touch me, please.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes in agreement, “yeah.” His eyes have acclimated enough that they can meets hers, hovering over him. And their eye contact doesn’t break as his left hand begins to work at the ties that hold her clothes together and his right snakes up her waist and arm to gently tug at the knot of her head band. 

She settles more firmly in his lap, her hips flush to his, and kisses him again, open-mouthed and wanting. The first brush of his fingers against her bare waist is startling, her skin runs so hot while his is always cold, and he can feel the muscles of her belly and back jump and tremble, causing shivers to run across her body like the movement of a water strider over the surface of a pond. 

She gasps against his mouth and he remembers touching like this in a different woods, how he had tried so hard to mask the ways his hands were shaking against her bare shoulders. How even as he had kissed her his brow had trembled, scared to leave his heart out on a platter for her to gobble up.

He doesn’t mask how tentative his touch is now, how he can’t bring himself to dig his fingertips into her skin like he usually would. Emori gets it, she’s affected too. Her exhales are whisper soft and contained between their bodies when they’d otherwise be loud. Even when his hand reaches up to cup her breast, still cool fingers tweaking her nipple to firmness, her grasping hand at his back is more evidence of her pleasure than her vocalizations. 

Her thighs tighten around his hips, and all at once all the air is forced out of his lungs. Gasping, he breaks their kiss, thrown by their intimacy, even after months together. 

Emori says something, but it doesn’t quite register due to the blood rushing in his head. 

“Come here,” she repeats, and he’s not even tempted to make some sort of innuendo. They kiss again and he’s so distracted by the swirl of her tongue against his that he doesn’t notice her hand trailing down his side till she works the button of his pants with easy movements. 

“Emori,” he gasps, flushed, and it says something that she manages to make his blood run so hot. His finger traces her navel, and he wishes he had the composure to divest her of her clothes with the ease that she does his, but just seeing her, hearing her, is exhilarating, like a trigger under his finger, and every brush of their skin is a flood of relief, like squeezing and knowing he’ll get to live another day. 

She grips him, and he can’t help but groan, because it aches, but only in his chest. She works her wrist slowly, not nearly as fast or as hard as she normally would, and it leads to him arching into her. His hands drawing down and over her ass and thighs in an effort to bring her closer. 

She releases him, and he swallows a moan, grinding his hips against her slowly in an attempt to mimic the movement. She’s undoing the ties of her pants, and his hand slides under the material now that it doesn’t cling so tightly to her. 

The softness of her inner thighs has always been a marvel to him. The skin of her face and arms and calves has been toughened by wind and sand and dirt, but she’s still soft in this one intimate place. 

She’s wet too. Murphy doesn’t need to slick his fingers through her lips to know this, but he does anyway, and feels the way Emori’s body seems to relax at the touch. He hadn’t realized she was still carrying so much tension in her body. 

He flexes his hand a little, creating more room and nudging her pants down just a tad further. She re-positions herself, spreading her legs more. Her forearm rests on his chest now, carrying a lot of her weight, but her other hand sneaks down to stroke him again and it’s easy to ignore the heavy press. His body shudders, fingers stumbling as they circle her entrance. 

“God,” he mutters, his left hand under her shirt again and pressing into her lower back. There’s a rhythm to this and they know it, it’s simply a matter of thinking the same thoughts. 

She kisses him some more, her lips lacking finesse, probably distracted by the push of his fingers inside her. The kisses transform into something more like an elongated open-mouthed press of her lips to the corner of his mouth, but he doesn’t care, not when her entire body is trembling tight with pleasure and her hips roll into his hand. 

His name escapes her lips and she’s not touching him anymore, but it doesn’t matter when she says his name like that, like how she says his name whenever they find each other. He twists his wrist the way she likes, and both her hands are clutching at his chest and why didn’t they take their clothes off? 

Emori makes a noise that could be a gasp or a half-laugh, but whatever it is it speaks of immeasurable relief, and then she’s clenching around his fingers in a familiar rhythm, and Murphy’s a bit shocked because she never comes that quickly. She doesn’t take a moment to recover, or even finish properly, before lifting his shirt over his head. Hers is quick to go next, and they both barely divest themselves of their pants before Emori takes him in hand and into her body. 

“Emori,” he groans, because she’s moving too fast and not fast enough all at once. And then her badass hand is pressing into his chest and he loves her strange knobbly knuckles, and her other hand is caressing his cheek to guide him into a kiss, and he loves her jagged fingernails and her raw lips, and her. He loves her. 

He sucks on her bottom lip, his arms wrapped around her to keep her close even though he knows she won’t leave. The rolling of her hips has him coming soon after, and he’s pretty sure he makes the same gasping sound that Emori made earlier. 

The forest is still weirdly quiet when he catches his breath. He wonders if all the birds and bugs have died or fled because of the ensuing apocalypse, or if ALIE scared them off long ago. It doesn’t really matter though. Not when the silence allows him to hear Emori more clearly. 

She doesn’t say anything for a while. Slips off him and pulls up her pants to sleep in, and he does the same, balls up his jacket as a pillow and an excuse for her to sleep as close to him as possible. She curls next to him without prompt, their eyes level with each other, and her breath even. 

“You know I love you too,” she says, taps a finger idly on his bare chest, over his heart. He nods, runs his fingers over her hair, but not through it, because she always says he tugs too hard. She kisses his lips, swiftly but gingerly, then settles properly on their makeshift pillow, and closes her eyes. 

He forces his hand to stop playing with her hair. “Love you,” he whispers against her temple, just above her ear. Then he closes his eyes, wrapped in her living, pulsing warmth, and sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> The lack of memori smut on the worldwide web is a travesty, honestly, so, ya know, write the smut you want to see in the world and all that. Tell me what you think! (Also tell me if you think I should up the rating?)


End file.
